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Boosting Weight Loss with Mental Imagery

When it comes to weight loss, it seems there is no shortage of programs. And while they may vary in what types, amounts, and frequency of foods they incorporate, there is one thing they can all agree on – losing weight requires changing behavior.

However, just how to change behavior has been a long and troubled problem – a problem that Dr. Linda Solbrig from the School of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh took a different approach to.

A Different Approach

Recruiting 141
participants, Solbrig allocated some of them to a Functional Imagery Training
(FIT) group and some to a Motivational Interviewing (MI) group.

While MI is a
technique that sees a counselor support someone to develop, highlight and verbalize
their need or motivation for change, and their reasons for wanting to change, FIT
goes one step further as it makes use of multisensory imagery to explore these
changes by teaching clients how to elicit and practice motivational imagery
themselves. Everyday behaviors are used to cue imagery practice until it
becomes a cognitive habit.

In Solbrig’s
study, the maximum contact time was four hours of individual consultation, and
neither group received any additional dietary advice or information.

The Results?

After six
months people who used the FIT intervention lost an average of 4.11kg, compared
with an average of 0.74kg among the MI group, and after 12 months – six months
after the intervention had finished – the FIT group continued to lose weight,
with an average of 6.44kg lost compared with 0.67kg in the MI group (Solbrig et
al., 2018)

“It’s fantastic
that people lost significantly more weight on this intervention, as, unlike
most studies, it provided no diet/physical activity advice or education. People
were completely free in their choices and supported in what they wanted to do,
not what a regimen prescribed” (Solbrig, 2018).

Dr Solbrig
explained, “Most people agree that in order to lose weight, you need to eat
less and exercise more, but in many cases, people simply aren’t motivated
enough to heed this advice – however much they might agree with it. So FIT
comes in with the key aim of encouraging someone to come up with their own
imagery of what change might look and feel like to them, how it might be
achieved and kept up, even when challenges arise” (Solbrig, 2018).

She continues,
“We started with taking people through an exercise about a lemon. We asked them
to imagine seeing it, touching it, juicing it, drinking the juice and juice
accidently squirting in their eye, to emphasize how emotional and tight to our
physical sensations imagery is. From there we are able to encourage them to
fully imagine and embrace their own goals. Not just ‘imagine how good it would
be to lose weight’ but, for example, ‘what would losing weight enable you to do
that you can’t do now? What would that look / sound / smell like?’, and
encourage them to use all of their senses” (Solbrig, 2018).

“FIT is based
on two decades of research showing that mental imagery is more strongly
emotionally charged than other types of thought. It uses imagery to strengthen
people’s motivation and confidence to achieve their goals, and teaches people
how to do this for themselves, so they can stay motivated even when faced with
challenges. We were very excited to see that our intervention achieved exactly
what we had hoped for and that it helped our participants achieve their goals
and most importantly to maintain them” (Andrade, 2018).

What we can learn from studies like this is that losing weight begins with what we imagine it will look and feel like.

Related Online Continuing Education (CE) Courses:

Behavioral Strategies for Weight Loss is a 2-hour online continuing education (CE) course that exposes the many thought errors that confound the problem of weight loss and demonstrates how when we use behavioral strategies – known as commitment devices – we change the game of weight loss.

While obesity is arguably the largest health problem our nation faces today, it is not a problem that is exclusive to those who suffer weight gain. For therapists and counselors who work with those who wish to lose weight, there is ample information about diet and exercise; however, one very large problem remains. How do therapists get their clients to use this information? Packed with exercises therapists can use with their clients to increase self-control, resist impulses, improve decision making and harness accountability, this course will not just provide therapists with the tools they need to help their clients change the way they think about weight loss, but ultimately, the outcome they arrive at. Course #21-13 | 2016 | 31 pages | 15 posttest questions

Beyond Calories & Exercise: Eliminating Self-Defeating Behaviors is a 5-hour online continuing education (CE) course that “walks” readers through the process of replacing their self-defeating weight issues with healthy, positive, and productive life-style behaviors. It moves beyond the “burn more calories than you consume” concept to encompass the emotional aspects of eating and of gaining and losing weight. Through 16 included exercises, you will learn how to identify your self-defeating behaviors (SDBs), analyze and understand them, and then replace them with life-giving actions that lead to permanent behavioral change. Course #50-10 | 2013 | 49 pages | 35 posttest questions

Why Diets Fail: The Myth of Willpower is a 1-hour audio continuing education (CE) course that explains why diets fail and provides strategies for what does work. Clinicians continue to recommend diets to their patients, even though diets don’t lead to long-term weight loss. In this course, Dr. Mann will describe the evidence on why diets don’t work in the long term, give the biological reasons why diets fail, explain why willpower is not the problem, and then give strategies for healthy eating that do not require dieting or willpower.

Dr. Mann is uniquely qualified to provide the real truth about dieting, eating, obesity, and self-control. She is a widely cited expert whose research has been funded by the NIH, USDA, and NASA, and is published in dozens of scholarly journals. She does not run a diet clinic or test diets and she has never taken a penny from commercial diet companies, or sat on their boards of directors, or endorsed one of their products. Because of this, her livelihood, research funding, and reputation are not dependent on her reporting that diets work or that obesity is unhealthy. This sets her apart from nearly all diet and obesity researchers and allows her to speak the truth about these topics, which she does with abandon. Course #11-07 | 2017 | 10 posttest questions

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Professional Development Resources is a nonprofit educational corporation 501(c)(3) organized in 1992. We are approved to sponsor continuing education by the American Psychological Association (APA); the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC); the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB); the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA); the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA); the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR); the Alabama State Board of Occupational Therapy; the Florida Boards of Social Work, Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy, Psychology & School Psychology, Dietetics & Nutrition, Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, and Occupational Therapy Practice; the Georgia State Board of Occupational Therapy; the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors (#MHC-0135); the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker & MFT Board and Board of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology; the South Carolina Board of Professional Counselors & MFTs; the Texas Board of Examiners of Marriage & Family Therapists and State Board of Social Worker Examiners; and are CE Broker compliant (all courses are reported within a few days of completion).